The Boundless Classroom

Book excerpt: Discover how to plan effective blended instruction with purpose and intention with help from this definitive, practical guide to lesson design. A global pandemic hit our world and education has forever changed. But have your instructional practices changed? Teachers must now leverage technology to provide students with high-quality teaching and learning experiences that transcend a traditional classroom’s walls. This is a historic opportunity to abandon antiquated teaching practices and reimagine instruction in ways that boost learning outcomes and prepare students for living and working in the digital age. This book offers guidance for creating and sustaining rigorous and engaging blended learning solutions. Opening with lessons learned from the pandemic, the book addresses impacts on lesson design and delivery, student engagement, assessment, and teacher training and PD. The following chapters build on and address these experiences, with each chapter featuring strategies and examples of how to implement effective approaches to lesson design for blended and online instruction. This book: • Explores seven different blended learning models, with strategies and suggestions for implementing each one. • Provides detailed guidance for planning a blended learning curriculum, from establishing a digital infrastructure to integrating students into a learning management system (LMS) to mapping a course scope and sequence. • Provides step-by-step design essentials for developing a pacing guide and creating effective blended and virtual lessons. • Features downloadable templates, checklists and guided professional learning tasks in every chapter to help design virtual and blended lessons. • Includes strategies for implementing authentic, student-led assessments. The book is sure to meet the needs of varying practitioners who are eager to learn about designing successful blended learning courses and understanding what makes each course work. Audience: K-12 teachers and instructional designers; faculty in higher education programs